Let me compare this vast countryside, which opens out before me as far as the double wall of mountains and clouds, to a flower of which this seat is the mystic heart. Is it not the geometric center where the scene, united into an harmonious whole, virtually takes on existence and a consciousness of itself; and where, to the studious contemplation of the occupant, all lines converge? The sun sets. I clamber up the steps of velvet whiteness where open pine-cones are strewn like roses. OCTOBER In vain I see the trees still green. Whether a funereal haze enshroud it, or whether an enduring serenity of sky efface it, the year is not one day less near the fatal solstice. The sun does not deceive me, nor the widespread opulence of the country. There is a calm inexpressibly placid, a repose from which there is no awakening. The cricket has scarcely commenced his cry when he stills it, for fear of being an annoyance in the midst of plenty, since it is only dearth that gives him the right to speak. And it seems as if one were cautioned only with bare feet to penetrate into the fastnesses of these golden fields. No! The sky behind me does not radiate the same light over the wide harvest; and, as the road leads me by the stacks, whether I turn the corner of a pond here or whether I discover a village by going farther from the sun, I turn my face toward that broad pale moon which I have seen all day. It was at the moment of emerging from the dark olives, when I saw the radiant plain open out before me straight to the barriers of the mountain, that an interpretation was communicated to me. Oh last fruits of a condemned season! In the achievement of the day is the supreme maturity of the irretrievable year. _It is finished._ The impatient hands of winter do not strip the earth barbarously. No winds tear at her; no frost splinters, no waters drown her. But more tenderly than May--or when insatiable June clings to the source of life, possessing the noon hour--the sky smiles at the earth with ineffable love. Like a heart which yields to continual importuning, is this consent; the grain separates from the ear, the fruit falls from the tree, the earth little by little abandons herself to the invincible solicitor of all. Death loosens a hand too full. The word that she hears now is holier than that of her wedding day, deeper, more tender and more glorious. _It is finished._ The bird sleeps, the tree falls asleep in the shade which encompasses it, the sun at the level of the earth covers it with a long ray. The day is done, the year is consummated. To the celestial interrogation is returned this amorous response. _It is finished._ NOVEMBER